Consumer Reports took the most popular weight loss diets of the moment, analyzed them, and served us the final score. It seems that Weight Watchers came out first, followed by Slim Fast and The Zone Diet .

The magazine considered factors like pounds lost, nutrition quality, how easy the diet is to follow and the dropout rates after six months and a year.

Weight Watchers won its high marks mostly through the low dropout rates, due to the weekly meetings based system. This is how Weight Watcher's followers manage to keep up with their nutrition plan, that has a rather simple philosophy: eat less, exercise more.

Slim Fast came out number two on Consumer Reports list. It has as well, found a philosophy that makes it easy to follow: replace part of your meals with shakes and bars that you can find allover, in the supermarkets.

All the diets are enough low calorie to sustain weight loss, as Nancy Metcalf, a senior editor at Consumer Reports, said. Dr. Atkins' diet too, but it is also too indulgent with saturated fats consumption and too low in fiber, fresh vegetables and fruits. Quite the oposite, Zone Diet gained good scores in what nutrition quality is concerned.

But the big problem is not whether the diets work in theory, but in practice. The Ornish diet plan, though highly praised for its long-term weight loss and benefic results in heart disease treatment, was the most difficult to stay in.

Also included in the review but not ranked for lack of sufficient independent clinical studies, were Internet-based eDiets, Jenny Craig, South Beach and Volumetrics.

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